Game Reviews and Author's Thoughts

Temp Worker Assassins Review Do you think you have what it takes to infiltrate an office as a temp worker assassin? Well, for starters, the office workers are not your normal shirt and tie types. They are Barbarians, Orcs, Gorgons, Halflings, Sorcerers, Ninjas, and even the Devil himself. Oh, and you can only use pencils and items you find in the stationery cupboard such as rulers, staplers, protractors, and clipboards as weapons. Security is pretty tight when you have Zombies walking around so there is no way to sneak in daggers or death potions. To make matters worse you are competing against other temp worker assassins to claim the lucrative bounties set on each “regular” worker. Temp Worker Assassins by David Newton is a quick game featuring deck building and worker placement that pits assassins against each other to claim the most bounties. The game is played through five rounds simulating Monday through Friday, to be the top assassin by the end of the week, you will have to successfully raid the stationery cupboards of different office departments to arm yourself with a deadly enough arsenal of office supplies to acquire the bounties of the most brutal office workers. Still think you have what it takes to be the top assassin? Let’s look into a week of being a temp worker assassin.Game Play: Every player is given a starting deck of pencils—a combination of fairly sharp and relatively blunt, and then draws the appropriate amount of those cards to begin the game. Hand size is dependent on the number of players. The first player places one of his assassin meeples in a department and performs the action stated on the department card. Actions include gaining a card from the cupboard—which adds new, deadlier office supplies to your deck, draw one or more cards from your player deck giving you a bigger hand to assassinate better targets, or some other action which can help you or hinder other assassins. You can also choose to attempt an assassination on one of the workers that are face up in the target pile, you just have to make sure your card attack value is greater than or equal to the defense value of the target. Play continues with each player placing an assassin and performing the appropriate action. Once all players have placed all their meeples the day is over. All meeples are returned to the player and the next day (round) begins. Game play continues until five rounds have been played. The first player to successfully perform an assassination each day gets the bonus card for that round. The bonus cards are helpful in making your deck better for assassinating the big guys.

Picture of the R&D Department Card.

Final Thoughts: The true strategy of Temp Worker Assassins is deciding which department to place your meeples on. Each department’s actions and benefits vary greatly and there is even an occasional bonus for occupying all spaces in one department. I was often torn between trying to get better weapons, making my current hand bigger, or going after weaker targets to get the daily bonus. In the end my strategy of quantity over quality failed miserably. I obtained the bonus every day and assassinated the most targets, but my targets were weak, and didn’t produce much in the way of bounties. The repalyabilty of this game is amazing. There are so many departments—currently 37 to choose from, and since you only play with 10 each game the different combinations are…well…a lot. The deck building aspect really reminded me of Ascension, which I truly love, having cards that let you permanently get rid of weaker cards, cards that let you draw additional cards, and even cards that let you attack and draw. Along with great replayability and amazing strategy, Temp Worker Assassins sets up quick and plays fast. I love games that can be played in about a half hour to forty-five minutes including setup and tear-down and Temp Worker Assassins is right there. David Newton managed to fit a very strategic game in a small package. Kudos!

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A software developer by day and avid game player by night.KickStarter has recently rekindled my love of board games. Now I am looking to help the little guys of KS get their games noticed and funded as well as demonstrate how easy or difficult a game is played its first time through.